Starbucks Preferred Store

✋ What is it?

This is an solution found in the Starbucks iOS app. The app switches your preferred store depending on what day of the week or at what time your order. If during the week your order from a location that closes on the weekend the app will automatically default to a store that is open.

🤲 How does this interaction or solution work?

The Starbucks app allows you to place mobile orders at stores near you. To place an order, the user needs to select the desired items and a pickup store.

The app will default to a store which would be likely the store at where your order the most. If that store is closed or unavailable, the app will default to a second preferred location. If you try to order at a rare time like 10 pm, the app will default to the closest open store.

The pickup store selector also gets automatically sorted by location which is an additional interaction that helps the user to select the most convenient store given their location context.

At the time of this writing, we couldn't determine if the Starbucks app uses a different kind of data input to determine the default store, but it would make sense that at certain point Starbucks will use a built-in machine learning model to improve the default preferences based on the user's context.

🙌 How does this interaction or solution work?

Reducing Cognitive Load and Improved Context.

By giving a default pickup location, Starbucks customers are no longer expected to take a decision that increases the cognitive load associated with the app.

As users start getting more familiar and accustomed to this default behavior, the app gets easier to use and potentially stickier. In the case of Starbucks, this means an increase of orders and a better distribution of store traffic.